


When Jedha Crumbles

by Plenty_of_Paper



Category: Rogue One - Fandom
Genre: I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Multi, i just have a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 19:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9338975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plenty_of_Paper/pseuds/Plenty_of_Paper
Summary: "Tell me, the whole city? All of it?”“All of it.”There's so little time to mourn, but grief doesn't wait.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't read the Rogue One novelization yet, so I don't know if this is canon compliant. I just wanted to explore what "home" meant to each of these characters.

“Tell me, the whole city? All of it?”

“All of it.”

Chirrut has to take a moment to breathe in deeply – _I am one with the Force and the Force is with me_ – because the holy city is gone. Vaguely, he feels Baze guiding him down a ladder and into the cargo hold of the ship. He can’t stop thinking about the bones of his mother, the ruins of the temple that he swore his life to protect, the first weapon he ever bought (okay, stole) for Baze, their home. A whole history reduced to dust by the single flick of a switch. It is breathtaking.

He feels the staggering moment when the screams of millions of souls falls silent, the exact moment when Jedha disappears.

His breath hitches.

_I am one with the Force and the Force is with me._

It doesn’t bring him comfort, for once. Where was the Force for the little girl who once handed him a flower and began to describe it to him when she realized he was blind? _It looks like how biting into a summer strawberry tastes_ , she’d said, guiding his fingers across the large, soft petals. _The stem is the color of the smell of freshly cut grass_. And he had seen it in his mind’s eye, so vividly and perfectly. She had blessed him that day, and he had thanked her around a lump in his throat.

Where was the Force for the other Guardians? Where was the Force for the merchants who came to sell their wares, the faithful who came to worship – even after the Empire took the Temple. How had their faith served them?

Baze crowds in close behind him, his hands on Chirrut’s waist. The monk can feel his beard on the side of his neck, hear the way his husband is trying to hold back tears.

He hasn’t heard that sound since the early days after the temple fell, when Baze kicked the rubble around - his faith in ruins - and cursed in a wobbly voice. Those early days were the hardest, when they were lost, and not even Chirrut knew yet what their path would be. In those early days, they wandered the streets in shock until their bodies felt like they'd collapse. They'd find a quiet corner or alley and curled together, trying to make sense of this loss.

Baze was constantly itching for a fight in those days, the muscles under his skin rolling with tension waiting to explode. Chirrut didn’t want him hurt, (he didn't want to know whether he could continue if Baze disappeared from his life) so he fought instead. Fought for both of them. People always underestimated the blind old monk, after all.

 _“I wasn’t finished eating,”_ Baze shouted, as Chirrut pulled him from a ruined bar late one night. Chirrut had thrown an idiot through the window and several through the eating area.

_“I had to.”_

_“What did he even do?”_

_“He looked at us wrong.”_

_“You couldn’t see his face!”_

_“I could feel it.”_

_“I hate you so much.”_

_“You just say that.”_

_“So much, you blind old ass.”_

But when they'd get home, Baze would press him against the door, his mouth worrying the spot beneath Chirrut’s ear that never failed to make him shudder and clutch at Baze’s shoulders.

_“We’ll never be able to go back to that bar - and I liked it.”_

_“So teach me a lesson.”_

And Baze would growl. His hands would become impatient, divesting Chirrut of his sake-damp robes, sliding up his sides and tracing the planes of his muscles as he guided him back to their bed. (Chirrut would whisper filthy encouragements to make him blush, even as his breath stuttered into gasps, even as his hands and legs and body pulled Baze closer, still teasing even as he shook apart.)

They found comfort in each other – two lost people making a home with each other.

Chirrut thinks about the small corner they had made for themselves in the busy, noisy city. He had known every square inch of it, known the size and shape and sound of it as if he had been born there. In a way, he had. It was from this place that he had begun to reorient his purpose, his life with Baze at his side. Their adventures took them to the far reaches of the small moon, but they always returned back to this home, breathless and alive.

Now, they no longer have a home. And Chirrut knows it’s just a place, their things were just…things, but he feels unmoored in a way he wasn’t expecting, hasn’t felt in a long time. _I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me_ , he reminds himself. Baze seems to be thinking along the same lines, because his arms tighten around Chirrut’s waist. He presses a kiss to Chirrut’s shoulder.

“Do you remember where we first kissed?” Chirrut whispers then, turning into his husband’s embrace. Baze still smells of Jedha, of their lifetime of memories, and Chirrut needs to know that not everything has been destroyed.

“You know I do, Chirrut.”

It was a hidden place, a grove of scraggly trees poisoned by the Empire’s mines. Chirrut went to read the earth, Baze followed to keep him safe (to keep him from doing anything foolish). That day, Chirrut had sighed. Jedha is dying, he’d said, shaking his head. A tear rolled down his face before he could stop it. He felt Baze approach him, so close. A calloused thumb touched his cheek, wiped the tear away and Chirrut grabbed it., needing the creature comfort of physical touch. He’d held it, tightly, to his face before turning his head and pressing a kiss into its palm.

 _“You old fool,”_ Baze had breathed, his mouth curling into a smile around the words. Their bodies shifted without thought, pressing against each other as their lips met, the culmination of years of unspoken words. It had felt like nothing Chirrut had ever experienced. It had felt like peace.

 

“All of it is really gone?” Chirrut asks, shivering in the cold cargo bay. Baze strokes a hand down Chirrut’s arm.

“All of it,” Baze confirms, the mourning rolling off him like waves, threatening to drown him. Chirrut wipes away the tears on his husband’s face, kisses the salt away. Something like a sob escapes from Baze, and it’s all the warning Chirrut gets before he’s being kissed.

This isn’t peace, he thinks. This is the searching for it.

\----

Bodhi watches Jedha disappear, and he closes his eyes. A thousand sense-memories flood him.

 

The way his mother's hands looked, curled around the handle of a knife as she prepared dinner. Jedha's suns shone hot behind her, outlining her profile in bright light and obscuring the rest of her face. He'd felt alone, right in that moment, in the quiet and the heat, because he couldn't see her face. His chest had seized with it, his breath hitched, and she must have heard because she'd looked up right then and smiled.

" _Raaje_ ," she'd said, and beckoned to him, the bangles on her wrists glinting gold. He hadn’t been alone. He wasn’t lonely.

_(That memory brought him comfort when he was conscripted into the Empire's service, and he spent so many nights in a cold, dark room that might as well have been a cell, with a cold, dark roommate who hates him on sight. He isn't alone but he's so very, very lonely.)_

Bodhi's mum smelled like rosewater and jasmine, and her kitchen smelled like oil and garlic and onions, the sweetness of carrots, the steam of boiling water, the earthiness of raw meat, the bite of spices. He would stand next to her and inhale all those lovely smells and try to imprint them on his memory - maybe if he smelled hard enough, they would go into his brain.

_(When he was hungry and tired and sad, he'd rifle through the smells in his brain. He filled his belly that way, so even the hardest of crusts and moldiest of cheeses could taste like a dish his mum set in front of him.)_

She sang a lot. Small silly songs that narrated what she did, or what he did. When it was just the two of them in the house, her voice rose like a bird's and enveloped him. He loved it when she sang songs at Temple, the way her pretty voice went high and thin, as if that was the only way it would go up and up and up and fit through the keyhole to heaven. Every note became worn and grooved in his brain, the way her voice swirled with the music of the instruments around them. He knew her whisper, the way she breathed when she was trying not to cry.

She sounded so frail, so sad, the night she died. As he sat by her side, listening to her labored breathing, she’d held his hand and told him to be brave, to be strong, to be good. He nodded as he wept, tears falling like rain from his eyes and snot dripping from his nose and he cried because he didn’t feel brave or strong or good in the face of her inescapable death. He was scared and weak and he was betraying his faith to work for the Empire. She stroked his cheek and sang him a little song about a tiny mouse who stands up to a bear.

“ _I love you,_ ” she sighed, when it ended.

“ _Sleep, mama,_ ” he whispered, kissing her cheek. She smiled, closed her eyes. She didn’t open them again.

_(Bodhi sang to himself, sometimes, when he needed her most. Maybe he didn’t understand or remember all the words, but it was enough to think about the way their voices sounded together.)_

He knew every step on the path to Temple. The stone that wobbled like a loose tooth exactly 167 steps away from his house. He knew every tree - the grooves on the bark of his favorite one, the crush of people in the marketplace, the way it was like a dance to get through. He'd always liked that, turning and shifting and folding his body to get into impossible spaces - he was good at recognizing when his body would fit and when he might get clocked in the eye with an elbow. He knew instinctively how to anticipate movement and how that might affect space, and he always, always knew how to maneuver to get around it.

_(He didn't know that it would serve him well. The Empire noticed and that was why they made him fly.)_

 

Bodhi's chest heaves. So many sights he'd never see, so many smells and sounds and things he'd never touch again. He’s trying to be strong, like he’s learned he has to be to survive. But the loss overwhelms him; he clutches at the gaping hole where his heart used to be (where Jedha, where his mum, where his innocence used to be). His knees give way.

"Whoa whoa." Strong arms wrap around him and prevent him from falling.

"His breathing is not normal. If this continues, he will fall unconscious in -"

"Yes, thank you, Kay.”

Bodhi breathes and breathes and breathes, until it's no longer breathing but a harsh, quiet keening. He hunches his shoulders and presses his fists to his mouth, but he can’t stop that sound, and he waits for the dull hurt of a fist or the sharp sting of a lash. Cassian just sighs, mutters something in a language Bodhi doesn’t understand and sinks onto a bench, pulling him down with him. It’s awkward at first – Bodhi’s face mashed into the bone of his shoulder, elbows sharp and flailing – until Cassian shifts and Bodhi ends up cradled in the curve of his body.

"I am so sorry," Cassian whispers, his lips brushing against Bodhi’s ear, his breath warm. "So, so sorry."

Bodhi opens his mouth to apologize, to be strong and say he doesn’t need any condolences, but what comes out instead is the sob of a small, scared child.

“I can’t,” he whispers, his voice a thready, undone thing.

“I know, _mijo_ ,” Cassian says, grave and sad and knowing. Somewhere, in the deep recesses of his grieving mind, Bodhi thinks it makes sense that this burdened, angry man should understand what it feels like to have lost everything. Bodhi clutches at the soft leather of Cassian’s jacket, shaking.

Cassian doesn’t say anything else, but his hand is gentle on Bodhi’s back, and he lets Bodhi cry.

\---

Jyn’s fists clench so tightly, she feels the bite of her fingernails against her palms. When she forces her hands open, blood bubbles up in eight small crescents. It hurts, but the sting is nothing compared to the gaping wound of rage that’s opened up inside her.

Saw is dead. He’d been dying for years, more machine than man now, and though he had abandoned her without explanation (leaving her to wonder _what had she done?_ in the dark and the cold), he had taught her how to survive.

He had wrapped her little fingers around a blaster on her seventh birthday and taught her to shoot it. It was raining, and water dripped into her eyes, and she couldn’t stop sneezing. He had made her stand outside with that blaster until she could shoot ten targets flying through the air in random arcs. She became sick that evening. As she lay in her cot, shivering with a burning fever, he had brushed a cool metal hand on her hot hot forehead and told her that she had to be strong if she wanted to survive. The Empire wouldn’t stop hunting them just because she was sick. His words were gruff, but there was affection on his face and in his voice. He was like that, gruff but affectionate, and when she pleased him, he told her stories of knowing her father and her mother. She’d held onto those scraps, along with her memories, and worried them in her mind when she was hungry and tired and alone.

Jyn wants to scream or cry, but she’s learned that these emotions aren’t useful – so she bottles them up and buries them. She focuses on this hope: her father is alive. Her father is alive, and he is counting on her. Her father is alive, alive, alive. She had thought him dead her whole life (it was better than thinking him tortured and rotting in a dank prison cell, better than thinking him a willing participant in the Empire). But he is _alive_ , and he has given the resistance reason to hope. Nobody believes her, yet, but he is alive and she’ll prove it. They’ll be together soon. It’ll be okay. They’ll be okay.

She moves away from the window, unable to stand the sight of the blank space any longer, and finds Cassian and Bodhi curled together, Kay in the pilot seat. Bodhi’s asleep, or at least appears to be, and his body shudders every now and then. Cassian is awake, and watching her.

“What?” she asks, a bit more aggressively than she means to.

“Are you okay?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” He levels her with a knowing look and she lifts her chin and glares at him, daring him to argue.

“Okay,” he says simply, not taking the bait. He shifts to a sitting position, letting Bodhi’s head rest on his thigh. Jyn notices that he places a hand on top of the pilot's head. She didn't think Cassian capable of such gentle gestures, but he looks at her and there is concern on his face, so maybe she's been quick to judge. “We are here, if and when you’d like to talk.”

“I am _not_ ,” Kaytoo pipes up from the pilot’s seat. “Human emotions are messy, and your tears will make me rust.” A pause, then grudgingly, “I will listen.” Another pause. “But only if Cassian says I have to.”

Cassian shrugs apologetically at her, and she feels a small sad laugh bubble up in her chest. She plops down on the bench next to Cassian, and allows her body to slump against the cold metal of the ship’s walls. Her head makes a dull thud against it, and she stares at nothing for a long, long while.

Saw is dead, but her father is alive. It’s all she has now, this tired hope that her father knows her and wants her, that her father is a good man.

Jyn sighs and scrubs at her face, then jumps when a hand pats her knee. Cassian’s looking down at Bodhi, but he pats her knee a couple times and squeezes once.

She thinks she should take off his hand for that, but it feels nice so she doesn’t. Just closes her eyes and feels the warmth coming from his body.

\---

Later, everyone gathers in the common area to eat, even though nobody’s really hungry. They’ve set a course for Eadu, and some of the tension in Jyn’s shoulders has bled into purpose. She’s restless now, jittery with pent-up energy and adrenaline. She fidgets with the silverware on the table, alternates between sitting and pacing the length of the ship - like a caged animal, ready to pounce.

Bodhi is significantly calmer, but his eyes are still wide and glassy, his breathing uneven. His eyes track Jyn’s movements from where he sits, shoulder-to-shoulder with Cassian (the touch seems to ground both of them). Every so often, Bodhi takes a deep breath, as though he wants to say something, but he keeps quiet. He looks round when Chirrut and Baze climb up from the cargo bay and gives them a small smile.

Chirrut approaches him, Baze right behind. The blind man puts one hand on Bodhi’s shoulder, rests his forehead against the pilot’s. Baze asks Cassian a question, and both he and Jyn turn toward him to answer and give the Guardian and the pilot some privacy.

Chirrut whispers something to Bodhi, but it’s lost to the thrum of the ship’s engines, and nobody tries to hear it: it’s between the two of them. He strokes the nape of Bodhi’s neck as he does. Bodhi closes his eyes, as if he’s receiving a blessing, and the corners of his mouth turn into a frown. But as his breath shudders out of him, Bodhi nods, straightens his spine. The expression in his eyes clears, and he sets his jaw.

“Yes,” he says, sounding surer of himself than he had ever before. Everyone turns to look at him. He spares them a glance, before he returns his gaze to Chirrut.

“I can do this,” Bodhi says. “I will do this.” Chirrut smiles beatifically, proudly, at him.

“You are a brave man – a good man – Bodhi Rook,” Chirrut says. Bodhi smiles, slightly unsure, like he doesn’t quite believe him, but years and years later, a little boy named Poe Dameron grows up on bedtime tales of Rogue One.

Poe Dameron grows up emulating them, these heroes. As a kid, his friends all idolize Cassian Andor - Rebel intelligence officer, dashing and heroic - but his mom tells him stories she’s heard of Bodhi Rook, the Imperial cargo pilot who defected, whose actions turned the tide.

“He was good and brave,” Shara tells him, as she rocks him to sleep. “He didn’t have to do anything, but he gave his life so the Rebel Alliance could win.”

He looks up the Rogue One transmissions as he trains to be a pilot (the thrill of it is nothing like he’s ever felt and Poe is already at the top of his class, young and cocky and sure of himself). The first time Poe hears Bodhi Rook say “Rogue One,” a thrill races up his spine. He’s spent his life wanting to be part of that legendary squadron, to bear the name.

After the first time he hears Bodhi Rook’s last transmission, he sits in the dark of his room for hours, thinking about the faint tremor in the man’s voice. _Is anybody there? Can anybody hear me?_ Nobody answers and Poe knows that nobody will. Poe thinks of the fact that Rook died on Scarif that day, died in the middle of the battle, died with his ship. Did he believe (did he hope) that he had succeeded or did he believe he had failed? It haunts Poe for days, until he eventually stops hearing Rook’s trembling, determined voice in his dreams.

And when Poe is caught in the First Order’s clutches and so very scared, he thinks about the way that terrified Imperial cargo pilot turned away from the gaping maw of a terrible power to do the right thing. Rebellions are built on hope – and the sacrifices of many. Kylo Ren means to kill him, and that’s okay. Poe thinks he can be brave like Bodhi Rook was. Besides, it will have been an honor to die for the same cause that Rook and Cassian Andor, Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus, Jyn and Galen Erso all died for.

(Poe doesn’t die, because the Force is a mysterious thing and it brings a beautiful, bright-eyed Stormtrooper into his life instead. He’ll live to become a martyr another day.)

 


End file.
